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AIP conference proceedings

Long Range Interactions With Laser Cooled Neutral Atoms

G. L. Gattobigio, Franck Michaud, G. Labeyrie, Jorge Loureiro, José Tito Mendonça, Thomas Pohl, Hugo Terças, Robin Kaiser, José Tito Mendonça, David P. Resendes, Padma Kant Shukla

Published Jan 1, 2008• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Multiple scattering of light in a trap of laser cooled neutral atoms leads to repulsion forces between the atoms. The corresponding interactions have long range behavior in 1/r2 and are thus similar to Coulomb interaction in an one component confined plasma. Consequences of these interactions will be described in this paper, including the limitation of the spatial density one can obtain in such systems and self‐sustained oscillations of the cloud.

DOI
10.1063/1.2996825

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Multiple scattering of light in a trap of laser cooled neutral atoms leads to repulsion forces between the atoms. The corresponding interactions have long range behavior in 1/r2 and are thus similar to Coulomb interaction in an one component confined plasma. Consequences of these interactions will be described in this paper, including the limitation of the spatial density one can obtain in such systems and self‐sustained oscillations of the cloud.
A classical collective behavior is observed in the spatial distributions of a cloud of optically trapped neutral atoms. They include extended uniform-density ellipsoids, rings of atoms around a small central ball, and clumps of atoms orbiting a central core. The distributions depend sensitively on the number of atoms and the alignment of the laser beams. Abrupt bistable transitions between different distributions are seen. This system is studied in detail, and much of this behavior can be explained by the incorporation of long-range interactions between the atoms in the equation of equilibrium. It is shown how attenuation and multiple scattering of the incident photons lead to these interactions.
We have studied the behavior of clouds of neutral atoms contained in a spontaneous force optical trap. Because of the low temperatures of the atoms (<1 mK) we have observed a variety of new phenomena which involve both short and long range interactions between the atoms. The short range interactions are manifested in two body collisions which are notable because of the very long collision times. This time scale causes the dynamics to be profoundly affected by absorption and spontaneous emission during the collision. An interesting assortment of collective behaviors are observed when the trapped atom cloud contains more than 105 atoms. These include the expansion of the cloud as the number is increased and dramatic changes in the distribution of the atoms at higher numbers. We can explain much of the collective behavior using a simple model that includes a 1/r2 force between the atoms arising from the multiple scattering of photons. Finally, we discuss the optical trapping of atoms directly from a low pressure vapor in a small glass cell. We have used these optically trapped atoms to load a magnetostatic trap in the same cell. This provided a high density sample of atoms with a temperature of less than 2 μK.
We present in this paper a review of our work on the impact of long‐range interactions on the static and dynamic behaviors of magneto‐optical traps (MOT) for neutral atoms. In such systems, all forces (confinement and interaction) are mediated by light. The most obvious signature of long‐range interactions is the dependence of the MOT size with number N of trapped atoms. We study in detail the scaling laws for the MOT size versus N, in a range of large N≫108. We then show that the competition between confinement and repulsive interaction can lead, for N large, to a new dynamical instability characterized by spontaneous, self‐sustained oscillations of the MOT. This instability is investigated experimentally and theoretically, using both a simple analytical model and a more refined numerical one.
We describe experiments that show collective behavior in clouds of optically trapped neutral atoms. This collective behavior is demonstrated in a variety of observed spatial distributions with abrupt bistable transitions between them. These distributions include stable rings of atoms around a small core and clumps of atoms rotating about the core. The size of the cloud grows rapidly as more atoms are loaded into it, implying a strong long-range repulsive force between the atoms. We show that a force arising from radiation trapping can explain much of this behavior.
We describe experiments that show collective behavior in clouds of optically trapped neutral atoms.This collective behavior is demonstrated in a variety of observed spatial distributions with abrupt bistable transitions between them.These distributions include stable rings of atoms around a small core and clumps of atoms rotating about the core.The size of the cloud grows rapidly as more atoms are loaded into it, implying a strong long-range repulsive force between the atoms.We show that a force arising from radiation trapping can explain much of this behavior.
We present in this paper a review of our work on the impact of long-range interactions on the static and dynamic behaviors of magneto-optical traps (MOT) for neutral atoms. In such systems, all forces (confinement and interaction) are mediated by light. The most obvious signature of longrange interactions is the dependence of the MOT size with number  of trapped atoms. We study in detail the scaling laws for the MOT size versus  , in a range of large N '3> 10^. We then show that the competition between confinement and repulsive interaction can lead, for  large, to a new dynamical instability characterized by spontaneous, self-sustained oscillations of the MOT. This instability is investigated experimentally and theoretically, using both a simple analytical model and a more refined numerical one.